Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Shamsudheen Fareed, a Salafi preacher in Kerala, has decided that Onam, Christmas and other such celebrations are haram.  A lot more things are haram in his version of Islam.  Movies are haram.  Even trimming the beard is! When a person convinces himself that he possesses the ultimate truths, he is destined to live in a bundle of delusions.  Simply because there are no ultimate truths.  Except in science and other rigid systems.  Even in those systems, truths are amenable to corrections.  An Einstein corrected a Newton.  Einstein’s theories are also not ultimate truths.  When it comes to human life and affairs, truths are never ultimate.  We keep learning and understanding them in our own way.  Source Joseph Conrad’s celebrated character, Kurtz ( Heart of Darkness ), is a good example of someone who deluded himself with his own ultimate truths.  He thought he possessed the ultimate truths and he wanted to civilize the native Africans by giving them those truths.  The re

Sakhavu (Comrade) is a recent Malayalam movie which tells the story of two Communists in Kerala, one belonging to the older generation while the other is a product of our very own times.   Krishnakumar is a left wing student leader with political ambitions.   He is selfish, cunning and manipulative – like most of our politicians.   He knows how to get out of people what he wants.   The end justifies the means for him.   And the end is nothing but self-aggrandisement.   Even when he is in a hospital to donate blood (which he was forced to do by his party), he is more interested in getting food and fruit juice from the patient’s people than donating blood.   He has no scruples about pocketing the money of another man whom he meets in the hospital and whom he had helped earlier with his political influence.   He fails to understand that the poor man was keeping the money for the medical needs of a hospitalised relative.   The patient who is supposed to receive Krishnakumar’

 Book Extract Suffering is inevitable. That is a fundamental lesson of life. Religions teach us that, philosophy does, and literature shows the same too. While dealing with the inevitable though unwanted, our options are quite limited. We should change what can be changed and accept what cannot be changed. We may need to adapt ourselves in the face of what we cannot change. Religion, philosophy, the arts, and a lot of things can help us to make life easier in the face of suffering. Aren’t these things primarily meant for that: to help us make life bearable and as pleasant as possible? Why haven’t they been able to achieve their purposes? Obviously, they have not been used rightly. On the other hand, they have been misused by certain people. Religion joined hands with politics and became a tool in the hands of bigots or the power-hungry. Philosophy is dead for all practical purposes, killed by our pursuit of the superficial and by the prevalence of the farcical. The arts have been t

The doc looked at me as if to ascertain whether I was an animal.   I had told him my complaint: intermittent fever. The fever plays hide and seek with me.   I wake up in the middle of my sleep feeling the body burning all over.   All sorts of pain shoot through some parts of the body as if to give company to the temperature.   It keeps me turning in bed this way and that for about an hour and then my nightdress is all drenched with perspiration.   Voila! Both the fever and the shooting pains have vanished. "How many times did this happen?" the doc asked. "Four," I said. "Maybe five." "When did it start?" "About two weeks ago," I said. It's then he stared at me.   I understood the meaning of his stare.   So I consoled him, "It's nothing, doctor. Once I got up and changed the drenched night dress, I was back to normal." "Then why did you come today?" "Last night my night